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Originally Posted by KingKong
As an aside, is there any other instrument where there are so many different ways to play the same notes? Violin style instruments maybe but any others?
I fully expect that a trombone can produce the same note with different positions of its tube, and any programmable keyboard can too. In a comparable but different vein, complex church organs with multiple keyboards will probably map parts of those keyboards to different octaves depending on which voice you select on which keyboard.
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05-19-2022 01:00 PM
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Originally Posted by RJVB
Key of A, you're in one of two positions.
Key of D, you're in one of 2 different positions. That was what I meant if it wasn't clear.
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Originally Posted by KingKong
D with 1st finger at 5th fret on A string: 5th position
D with 4th finger at 5th fret on A string: 2nd position
(5th fret on a string, which one? )
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Originally Posted by RJVB
i had to learn it by ear, I couldn’t play it from a score, but that was me reading notes rather than phrases. Of course, good readers can hear the music (if they are familiar with the style, that is; a classical player can’t read bop convincingly for example. Otoh most jazzers suck at Mozart.)
So yeah your point about singing it, exactly. The very good readers I know do this as (or rather ahead of time as) they read.
Classical guitar scores come with so many little numbers and shit I don’t think they really count as reading.
(I half jest, but if what I said wasn’t true why would that be necessary and why would there be such a massive preface on fingering with reference to harmony, accent and so on in my edition of the Bach lute suites? Tbf the fingerings are very very good and musical and absolutely not what if call positional at all)Last edited by Christian Miller; 05-19-2022 at 02:17 PM.
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Alternatively, say you are an experienced session guitarist and you come across a pentatonic/blues melody with a little note above saying ‘with distortion’
Are you going to use ‘legit’ Segovia left hand technique?
No of course you’re not.
(Otoh you can hardly expect the composer who wants a rock guitar lead line to be intimately familiar with guitar playing that they have specified the technical details….)
in any case, if you are experienced, you are going to stomp on the drive and use three fingers, bends and vibrato.
Later, you see a melody in octaves in a jazz/funk chart. Are you going to play that in position using legit classical octave technique? No, of course not. You are going to lock your left hand and Wes it up.
There’s a right answer here in both cases. An idiomatic answer, beyond simply playing the right notes, based on reading between the lines to what the composer wants to hear, if not at sight then quickly. The sort of thing that means the difference between getting called again, or not. Experience is key.
So you have to perceive the idiom and alter your technique accordingly. It’s one of the fun challenges.
It also strikes me that there’s a disconnect between how many guitarists read (often quite properly in position) and how they normally play when improvising or playing music by ear. In the case of the non classical guitarist this may be less pronounced (although from my limited knowledge it still seems to be there) but in general the journey must be towards a greater union of the two.
At least that’s how I see it.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
"reading convingly" is what I referred to as doing more than just playing the notes
Classical guitar scores come with so many little numbers and shit I don’t think they really count as reading.
(I half jest, but if what I said wasn’t true why would that be necessary and why would there be such a massive preface on fingering with reference to harmony, accent and so on in my edition of the Bach lute suites? Tbf the fingerings are very very good and musical and absolutely not what if call positional at all)
I don't know your Bach lute suites edition, but I can imagine whomever wrote the preface felt it necessary to point out the different approach to music in this period so long before the (late) Romantic era which is still the basis for so much classical teaching (and the guitar in particular, probably). A long explanation on how to execute ornaments (trills and the like) would concern itself with fingering, and many of the notes in those suites are written-out ornamentations (and arpeggios) so that could be part of the explanation. Is the focus only on LH fingering?
Another possibility: AFAIK these suites are written for baroque lute, which in a sense is further away from the guitar than the renaissance lute. Many strings, partly doubled, meaning the LH fingerings will be very different from what they (would normally) look like on guitar. But I suppose you could finger the score in a way would feel more familiar to a lute player; that would give a lot of material for prefacial discussion
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Well using classical to talk about reading music is my opinion a red herring. You could read Sor etudes all day and not be able to play a note of jazz, of course. But jazz is often notated and it is part of my job to read it.
I’m not really a classical player so I’m reluctant to get into the woods on this. I play a little, I’m not very good. It gives me pleasure and as weird as it sounds one of things I most enjoy about it is the fingerings, which teach me a lot about the instrument. (Like position shifting for classical guitar is refreshingly businesslike. rock and jazz students get so intimidated by it haha.)
And of course the music is wonderfully satisfying to play, even badly.
That said, I don’t really see reading through Bach etc as being very relevant reading practice for what I do; the challenges are very different. I’d rather dig out the real book for that.
Anyway my main focus is of course jazz. In this case as a working player, I find position playing sounds worse in many cases. A highly mobile left hand is very often the best choice for bop lines, melodies and so on. It may be necessary to read in positions if I don’t know the music; but that’s more a reflection on room to grow as a player than what I think is the preferred approach. It works well enough to get you through it, and day to day, that’s worthwhile.
(Really I wish I had the guts and time to be a mostly three fingered pronated left hand player, because that’s such a great way to play.)
As far as classical goes (and things like the Leavitt books), the pedagogy is obviously oriented around strict positions (and this is no bad thing btw, I teach strict positions), but as far as I can see the left hand ends up being very mobile in any case with more advanced players, as they accommodate the needs of the music. This is obviously somewhat removed from discussions of reading studies in position.
Not that I even think this is a bad thing to practice positional reading, because it’s all useful. in beginners it gets you out of having to look at the neck, for example. It’s just that musical choices often in my experience take you away from that, and the better a reader you get, the more you do that.
There is a bad side to it, in that players can neglect ‘along the string playing’ get stuck into dogmatic fingerings and avoid some the effective solutions that are employed by less ‘schooled’ players. Most teachers, myself included, would see this as a necessary evil and try and introduce some of these other things as players develop a basic grasp of their instrument.
But however you do it - I think spending too much time rationalising this or that school is a bit of a red herring. CAGED is good for jazz I would say.
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Tl;dr
It often sounds gooder to move your left hand around when playing music.
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Originally Posted by RJVB
The two of you are arguing about completely different things, if u don't mind me saying RJVB, if that is your approach to the fretboard then I question how you can improvise or transpose with that approach. Maybe you can but the CAGED kind of position concept that me and Christian Miller mean is far more suited to a jazz or blues or rock player.
Christian Miller, am with you 100% on the moving the left hand more thing making music sound gooder. But id still call it a positional approach, as you are always in one of the positions no matter what you are doing.
I would say though that to be able to move the left hand more you need to spend time nailing down ur chops in each position. As I always say on here, I'm not anywhere near being able to call myself a proficient jazz player, so left hand movement is to come for me down the road. Now heres one example of how I am making progress:
-Take a position and nail down the scale and arpeggios that are in it.
-then pick a standard and get to the point of fluid improv in that position.
- repeat process for the next one.
I've currently got maybe 3 of them sorted out, 2 to go!
After I've got all 5 then I plan to start moving the left hand more as you say, but for now I'm more than happy playing away in my own little world.
But yeh ill give you your dues, having read your posts I might try to bring the left hand movement in a bit sooner.
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Well I suppose by that definition it’s impossible to play un-positionally
Anyway this is all sort of splitting hairs and my main point was pretty much, one should aim to read music the same way that you would play in general, which for jazz or rock would the same way that you would if you were playing by ear or improvising. (Which is to say not like a massive NERD and like a musician with a bit of, you know, mojo and swag and so forth, breathing life into the notes etc etc.)
This is hard as reading is pretty alien for most guitarists, but can only be achieved through experience and exposure and a modicum of intelligence.
Reading exercises that stay strictly in position have their place… but I’ve drifted away from that stuff over the years. It probably did me good but that Leavitt stuff does my head in for all the wrong reasons. It’s the musical equivalent of mild supermarket cheddar, which is a barbarism I will not detail in depth as I do not wish to horrify Frenchmen.
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Originally Posted by KingKong
Originally Posted by RJVB
In the JK video I posted earlier in this thread, he plays the exact same five-note chromatic phrase in sixteen different ways, covering 12 frets. His hand does not jump all over the neck - it shifts gradually. Its a straightforward demonstration of both of the concepts above: each version starts with the index finger in a different location, but each position change does not affect his ability to play the exact same phrase each time. Admittedly, it is a simple phrase and you might not be able to play EVERY musical phrase sixteen ways... but it is an effective demonstration.
+1 on Christian's observation that you can't go from rock bottom to fluid jazz pro in four years. I did not mean to imply that. But you can learn a lot in four years: you can build the mental model that links your hands, your ears, and your brain. Then you keep refining that skill set; lifelong, really.
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Originally Posted by starjasmine
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Originally Posted by KingKong
Last edited by Litterick; 05-19-2022 at 11:37 PM.
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Welcome to the club. Guitarist are notorious for being bad sight readers. It’s probably got something to do with the way most of us learn as beginners. It’s easy to create basic music on a guitar so we ignore the complex stuff. A qualified music teacher would go a long way in getting over the hump. It’ll take all the anguish out of it.
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Originally Posted by KingKong
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Just did it with twinkle twinkle little star, the thing I learnt was that I can't do it.
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Originally Posted by KingKong
maybe I’m weird but I enjoy failure (at least private failure). It means there’s something I can learn to do and that’s a win. You can say after a week ‘I couldn’t do this at all last week, and now I can do it a bit.’
Because otherwise as a player who’s been playing for a long time it can become very hard to measure progress. I see the secret as finding things you absolutely suck at because that’s when you can enjoy the N00B gainz.
luckily for me, this isn’t hard.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Learning to read music is like asking you to pat your head and rub your belly at the same time. You are trying to make sense of at least two bits of information at the same time: note value and rhythm value. No wonder the brain gets overwhelmed.
Looking back, I would start with rhythmic values first, forget notes. With a metronome, practise rhythmic values, picking up-down on the open strings until it becomes second-nature. Learning where the notes are on the fretboard is not that difficult. It is sounding the notes and rhythmic values to make music that is the difficult part. The greatest difficulty is the rhythmic i.e. time aspect of it. Playing in time is the most difficult part of reading music. When you get the rhythmic values down pat, it becomes much easier for the brain to read chiefly the notes.
I'd start with rhythmic values first until I get them right. Most teachers teach you to read notes and rhythmic values at the same time. I think this overwhelms the brain and that is why most people give up because it is very tiring.
Rhythm is the foundation and soul of music. Rhythm is what makes music music. Rhythm should be the first thing that is taught, not notes.
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OK - I confess. Learnt to read over a three year period learning clarinet 5O years ago. Held on to the rythym stuff. returned to guitar 25 years ago and work between ear, tab and rythym stuff on treble clef. What's not to like? Rythym rules - for me
David
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Originally Posted by blackcat
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Originally Posted by blackcat
Or everything has been said and people have moved on, the way it usually goes with threads and discussions...
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Originally Posted by RJVB
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Originally Posted by KingKong
The violin is learned as a position instrument; uses fifth intervals between the strings and the scale length is quite short compared to a guitar. This allows scales to be played in one position using just two strings and allows a two and a half octave span of pitches to be played from just first position, and very often that covers everything needed. Moving to higher positions offers more ways to finger the same pitch (scales that include G, D, A, or E already offer multiple fingering for those notes as first position open strings).
The saxophone has multiple fingerings for the same pitch. Some pitches' fingerings are formed and released more smoothly depending on the previous or subsequent adjacent pitch fingerings (chromatic, diatonic, other, and vary for different keys signatures).
Higher up, there are many more possible fingerings; the altissimo register has pitches that may be figured by up to two dozen different fingerings. Some of those are chosen by dexterity of formation within the line being played, but many are chosen for "special" qualities: some are slightly flat and allow good intonation when blowing hard, others are used for soft playing, some have deviations in intonation that sweeten line in particular keys, some can be bent and others will "break" if forced to bend, some have purer sounds, others are rough.
The sax player learns which ones to use for expressing his musical requirements... a little bit like the guitar player choosing to finger a phrase peaking on the B string rather than the E string so as not to lose its tone feel.
Time After Time - Jazz Ballads by Jeff Arnold -...
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